Thursday, September 6, 2007

Global-Thinking: Learning to change the worldA strategy of support for the global dimension in education in the Eastern RegionManaged by the East of England Development Education Network (EEDEN)Funded by the Department for International Development (DFID)

The Global Dimension in schools: where do you start?

Dear Teachers,

There are many successful ways to bring the global dimension into schools, but where do you begin? At first glance there’s a baffling array of documents, awards, terminology, resources and conflicting priorities. Do you focus on ecological, sustainable, economic, healthy, or international themes? How can you prioritise these issues and meet coursework requirements exam deadlines and every child matters outcomes? Is it to better to be an international school, an eco school, a healthy school, a global school, a sustainable school, or a fair trade school? It may seem easier not to start!

But growing awareness of the global dimension’s relevance and benefits to pupils is raising its profile and priority in the national curriculum. The challenge is to teach pupils how to think rather than what to think. With the right methods and resources, dauntingly complex and potentially controversial issues can become stimulating and curriculum enhancing. The key is to identify the concepts and values behind the global dimension and introduce them in the way that best fits your school. There are many routes, but this diversity is part of the strength, offering complimentary rather than competing concepts which share common ground and have positive educational outcomes – a broad and balanced education, underpinned by global and ecological values and effective learning methods.

Planned inclusion of the global dimension, tangibly evident across the curriculum and the whole school, creates conditions for critical-thinking, open-minded, well-informed pupils to thrive and enables them to choose lifestlyes and behaviours that are just and sustainable.

So where do you start?Start here…

1. Give it a go Focus on what you do best, and start with your special interest or subject area. Why not try one activity in your subject from the teaching ideas (8: some teaching ideas, below) or choose an activity from the Oxfam site for teachers www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet. If it works well, exchange it with other teachers, and try out their ideas.2. Get Resources

→ Explore online activities, resources and teaching inspiration:

www.globaldimension.org.uk: for resources in all areaswww.globalgateway.org: for advice on school linking www.unicef.org.uk: for rights based activities www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet: for resources, activities and cpdwww.wateraid.org.uk: for resources on teaching water 3. Get informed about the key concepts and valuesStarting from first principles: these five sources encapsulate the concepts and embody values for the global dimension that will guide all your work:

→ 8 key concepts for the Global Dimension in the curriculum:1. Citizenship2. Sustainable development3. Social justice4. Values and Perceptions5. Diversity6. Interdependence7. Conflict Resolution8. Human rightsThese are the key starting points for bringing the global dimension into any learning: For illustrations of how to apply these see DfES, DFD (et al 1985) Developing a Global Dimension in the Curriculum on www.globaldimension.org.uk Go to home page, click on ‘curriculum information’, then click ‘information for England’ and download document

→ 8 doorways as entry points to explore sustainability1. The global dimension2. Local well-being3. Inclusion and participation4. Food and drink5. Energy and water6. Purchasing and waste7. Travel and traffic8. Buildings and grounds

Instil positive and sustainable behaviour in your school: For illustrations of how to apply these see DfES (2006) ‘Sustainable Schools for Pupils, Communities and the environment’ Ref 04294-2006BKT-EN – to download or order the document log on to www.teachernet.gov.uk/publications

→ The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC):The global bill of rights for all children up to the age of 18, adopted by the UN General assembly in 1989

Pupils should know about their rights and their responsibilities under UNCRC. For information and activities on UNCRC and case studies of schools that are ‘Rights Respecting’, with an embedded rights framework and democratic processes in their curriculum and school councils go to www.unicef.org.uk/tz/rights/convention.asp

→ 5 Outcomes for Every Child Matters: DfES Core Strategy:Every child, whatever their background or circumstances, to have the support they need to:1. Be healthy2. Stay safe3. Enjoy and achieve4. Make a positive contribution5. Achieve economic well-being

Reread the ECM framework, applying the UNCRC principle that every child in the world matters and see how it changes the perspective. www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/aims4. Explore the opportunities for whole school involvement→ Curriculum enhancement days and events as catalyst for change:UNICEF Day for Change 1 Feb 08 Topic: The Gambia www.unicef.org.ukComic Relief Sport Relief 08 / Red Nose Day 09 www.comicrelief.org.ukFair Trade Fortnight: March www.fairtrade.org.ukBlack History month: October www.nead.org.ukMake Poverty History Campaign www.makepovertyhistory.org

→ Award schemes to motivate and bringing about positive changebut should be judged by their observable impact on the teaching and learning on the whole school and the ethos which underpins it. Why not take a look and find out which would enhance good practice at your school? Your school be:a Fair Trade school www.fairtrade.org.uka rights respecting school www.unicef.org.uka global school www.yhgsa.org.ukan international school www.globalgateway.org.uk/isa/an ecoschool www.eco-schools.org.uk/5. Get creative→ Embed the global dimension in your school plans:Take a critical look at your teaching practice, subject content and whole school planning. You can do an audit and evaluation of day to day practice and school plans by using the key ideas (see 3 ‘get informed’) and the awards criteria (section 4) to review your practice. Look for opportunities to bring global and sustainability issues into all areas using the wide range of resources available from Harambee, Oxfam and globaldimension.org.uk (see 2 and 4 above)

→ Develop your own ideas: Apply for a curriculum development grant (£500 - £3,000) from EEDEN. These grants are given for innovative and replicable good practice on the global dimension in the curriculum in this region. 6. Get networking→ Join the EEDEN Teachers’ networks:If you are a teacher in the Eastern Region you could get involved with EEDEN teachers’ global dimension networks. We have networks of working teachers who meet (at our expense) to develop and share good practice and organise event like this conference today. To join a group near you, or find out how to start a new group contact: sheila.tucker@dsl.pipex.com or claire.bennett@harambeecentre.org.uk.

→ Share your ideas:You can share your ideas on the new ESI International dimension website. For information contact steven.brand@essexcc.gov.uk

You could also submit case studies to QCA, teachernet and see others ideas through teachernet and NC online.

7. Get professional developmentPlan an INSET on the global dimension in your school or with neighbouring schools. The organisations listed (2 above) can help with this and there are professional development ideas on www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet.

Look out for professional development opportunities in the region promoted by Essex education advisers, EEDEN, The Sustainable Schools Strategy, The British Council and Development Education Centres. If you find out about a good opportunity let us know at EEDEN so that we can publicise it.

MSc in Education for Sustainability at South Bank University: www.lsbu.ac.uk/efs/ comprises 8 modules and a dissertation. You can do the course full time, distance learning/ part time or slow track, and you can do individual modules as well.

Graduate Certificate in Training for Development Education (The Global Trainer) at the Institute of Education www.ioe.ac.uk/courses/gctde/ involves study three weekends and some coursework.

1. Making global connections: Tossing the globe:Toss an inflatable globe around the room and ask each person who catches it to think of a connection between them and another part of the globe. They can show where the place is if they can. Examples might include where they have friends or relatives, where their clothes came from, where they went on holiday, reading a book or watching a TV programme about… It takes only a few minutes to demonstrate global interdependence. This is a good activity for breaking the ice or introducing the idea of being 'global citizens'. It can also help pupils to share their experience of other parts of the world.

2. Globingo: Introducing global or environmental issues: Write a number of questions or tasks in boxes on a sheet of paper (e.g., find someone who: Is wearing something that was made outside Europe or knows where aspirin comes from). Give each pupil a copy and ask them to go around the room until they find a different person who can answer each question. Set a time limit or finish when one person has an answer for each question. Then give the answers and discuss them. This is useful for making global links or raising issues and recognising our areas of ignorance, misconceptions and assumptions. It is very flexible and questions can be changed to suit the topic, ability and time. It is a good activity for adults, to show the relevance of these issues, and a good icebreaker.

3. The Human Atlas[1]:Ask each pupil to think of a country. Designate an area of floor space as the world and show which way is North and where the UK is. Ask pupils to stand where they think their country is in relation to the UK. Each person says which country they are. They then realign themselves in relation to each other. Check again which country they represent and make any necessary adjustments. (With younger pupils this might be done for continents). To make this more complicated for older pupils (or adults), change the orientation of the map so that Britain is at the edge of the map instead of in the middle.

4. Pictures Activities[2]:Choose a photograph of someone from another part of the world. Ask your pupils to work in pairs and spend five minutes listing all the connections they can think of between themselves and that person. Discuss the similarities and differences. Images used to convey messages about countries of the South are often negative and misleading. Activities can be done with photographs to encourage pupils to question their sources and choice of images. Carefully chosen pictures can be used to convey a more balanced view of other cultures and places, and similarity and differences between people and localities. There are many useful photo / locality packs.[3] Cartoons and postcards are another good way to open discussion.

5. Artefacts:Artefacts can provide a good introduction to global issues, (e.g. difference, similarity, sustainable materials, recycling, fair trade). Contact Harambee for information on obtaining artefacts and how to use them. It is better to choose every day objects than atypical ones. Be careful to explain that a few artefacts do not represent a whole county or culture. A useful exercise is to ask pupils to select 10 objects from their own lives to show to a child in another country.

6. Perceptual Maps:Give your pupils an outline map of e.g. Africa and give them 10 minutes them to draw on it the images that they associate with it. Discuss their choice of images (lions, poverty, mud huts) and offer a more balanced view of Africa, (achievements, languages, mobile phones, pop music, football, culture, history.) Many pupils may be surprised to learn that Africa is a continent of many countries, not one country. Discuss whether their views are stereotypic and why?

7. Storytelling and the introduction of stories from other cultures:English offers the ideal opportunity for introducing stories from other cultures, which can lead to activities and learning about the cultures from which the stories came. Harambee and other resource providers have a wide range of multicultural stories. Harambee has many story and poetry books from other cultures and books about the lives of children in other countries. A good source of books from around the world is Letterbox library, a mail order catalogue www.letterboxlibrary.com

8. Form time activities: Development education is a good source of activities for form time. The Oxfam catalogue lists other books of co-operative games and parachute games that help to develop the skills, attitudes and values of caring and active global citizens.

9. Art and technology: Art and Technology provide excellent opportunities to weave global issues into the Curriculum. See for example hEart of West Africa from Global Education Derby or Hands on Technology resource pack and video for 14-16 from Intermediate Development Group, available from Oxfam.

10. Music: Oxfam’s site for teachers www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet has a new set of global music lesson on line. Visit www.musicforchange.org for additional music resources and to book world musicians. A & C Blacks Song books including 'Mango Spice' (Caribbean songs), the 'Singing Sack' songs and stories from around the world and 'The Green Umbrella' (poems songs and stories for environmental assemblies) are excellent global music resources. RISC (Reading DEC) has a resource called 'World's Behind the Music'. WWF publish a number of musicals suitable for secondary school choirs and orchestras.

→ Cross curricular themes e.g.: food production and fair trade

There is a global dimension to everything that we do, learn or teach. There are many different ways of introducing global dimensions into the curriculum and one of the best supported and resourced is the topic of food production, trade and fair trade. The lives of producers and consumers around the world are more closely linked now than they have ever been and it therefore follows that the choices made by the buyers can have positive or negative effects on the lives of the producers. We all consume and make choices about what we consume, whether directly because we do the shopping or, indirectly because our ‘wish list’ influences the person who is doing the shopping.

What is fair Trade? In a nutshell, fair trade means paying the real cost of production to give the producer a viable living.

So where do you start? Everyone in your school will have direct or indirect links with others around the globe. It is a good idea to demonstrate the existence of these links. You can do this effectively, in a few minutes, by tossing an inflatable globe around the class and asking people to make a connection between themselves and another country. Alternatively, you could play a game of Globingo (with tasks like ‘find someone in the room who is wearing something that came from another county’). Martin Luther King said by the time you finished your breakfast this morning you had already relied on others around the world. Ask pupils what they ate for breakfast and discuss where these products may have come from. These activities are a good prelude to understanding interdependence. Once you introduce topics like fair trade into your teaching you will see many other opportunities for developing the global dimension.

Geography: Use fair trade to enhance study of distant localities: why not study bananas from the Caribbean, Cocoa from Ghana, Tea from India, or Coffee from Kenya or Brazil.[4]

Learn from your colleagues: In addition to examples on Teacher net and QCA, look at the Geographical Association’s ‘Valuing Places’ project [5] which enabled teachers to innovate and share ways of helping children to engage emotionally and intellectually with localities –activities such as mapping food miles, and ‘affective’ mapping (pupils map their feelings about a place).

Local and global links in Food and Farming: Explore local and global perspectives on food and farming, and commonalities of issues that face farmers in the UK and in other parts of the world. An article in the Cambridge paper a few years ago highlighted the local farmers’ complaint that for every £1.00 spent by consumers on potatoes they only received 8p, which mirrors the plight of producers of cocoa, and bananas.

Sustainability, recycling and environmental protection: Explore issues of transportation by looking at the distance (‘food miles’) that food has travelled to reach you and the environmental impact of consumer demand for out of season and exotic foods. Visit a supermarket or a farmers market to look fair trade or the origins of fruit and vegetables. You could look at packaging and waste, or the impact of advertising and the media on our buying habits. Measure the impact or ‘global footprint’ of your lifestyle or your school on the planet.

Rights and responsibilities: Pupils can develop the principles of fair play, right and responsibilities that are embodied in fair trade. A democratically run and environmentally responsible school will help to impart these values to its pupils. The ‘wants and needs’[6] activity from UNICEF is a good foundation for learning about fair trade and related ethical, social and environmental issues.

The people behind the products: Develop pupils’ empathy (rather than sympathy) with the people behind the products, using photo packs, artefacts, and stories to show what life is really like in other countries. Remember to set any stories, photos and artefacts in context. Beware the pitfalls of reinforcing stereotypes. A family in West Africa might use a traditional cooking pot and a mobile phone! Globalisation works in both directions.

Cross Curricular Resources for KS3/4 Classroom Activities: order from Harambee info@harambeecentre.org,uk 01223 358116 or order online from globaldimension.org.uk; www.nead.org.uk/resources/search; www.tidec.org.uk; www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet. There are many different resources for introducing the principles and practice of fair trade. These can provide the means to develop skills, attitudes, values and knowledge that will help children to grow up as active, informed global citizens who understand the range of choices and the impact these will have on others. Resources typically provide supporting information and additional sources where you can find out more. They are cross curricular and enhance skills in maths, literacy, speaking and listening, geography, history, citizenship and beyond, and help to meet the values of the national curriculum, creativity, excellence and enjoyment, the inclusive classroom, education for sustainable development and cultural diversity. Classroom activities are interactive, fun and effective. Many use role play and games which help pupils to develop and articulate a view. Their aim is not to provide all the answers, but to encourage pupils to ask questions and make up their own minds about the right course of action for them.Chocolot 2004 11-16, ‘Bananas and Cocoa Beans 7-14 2004 and Xchanging the World 199716+ from Reading International Solidarity CentreLocococo 9-90 Humanities Education Centre 2000The Chocolate Game: Fair Trade Edition (1999) £4.75 Leeds DEC 11-18Paper Bag Game 2003 9+, Trading Game 2003 14-19, Trade Rules 2002 16+ Christian Aid, The Chocolate Trading Game Christian Aid/ Comic Relief 2001 7-1480:20 Development in an Unequal World TIDE 2002 16+The real price of cotton NEAD 2002 11-16+Bananas Unpeeled Banana Link 2001Mugged: Poverty on your coffee cup 2002 16+ The Coffee Chain Game 2004 13+and The Best of The Bunch: KS4 16+ OxfamFood and Farming local and global www.tidec.org/Resources KS2/3 £8.00

[1] A good resource for looking at the issues around maps is 'Mapping Our World' Oxfam £9.00[2] For advice on using photographs, contact Harambee or go to www.Oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet[3] Photopacks: Making a Meal of It, Oxfam £13.95, Go Bananas Oxfam £14.00